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Franknstein

Posted 01 November 2018 - 10:31 PM

Franknstein

(2) Evoker

Members

97 posts

Location:low Earth orbit

In terms of game systems design or evaluating some metagame/strategy, "healing" in the conventional tool-tip sense is not a useful enough definition, because ultimately what matters is "how long you stay alive." In that sense, BDD and healing accomplish the same goals, but they do so differently by changing which variable they keep fixed to accomplish it (in the mathematical model).

Not arguing with the math, which is sound as an abstract, I do think that by dismissing the environment you present an error about BDD.

1. The counter to healing – damage, is much more common than the counter to BDD – Arcane Dampener. So, in all of the game healing has less weight than BDD in achieving the goal "of staying alive". BDD is more effective (and arguably requires less resources – stats, equipment, e.t.c – from the player).

2. The counter to BDD happens to counter all buffs without specific discrimination.

3. The environment provides ways to exploit BDD – Salvation of Time and Brilliant.

One can't make BDD less effective by just giving out Arcane Dampener to every schmuck in every encounter, bosses to be a challenge have to have some form of Arcane Dampener built into them, fun and good buffs get screwed by association, and BDD in it's current form is a pain in the hindquarters from a designers perspective.

Point is – you can say, that everything is nice and dandy with being immortal for some time as a general concept, but you can't say the same about the implementation of this concept in Deadfire.

Boeroer

Posted 02 November 2018 - 12:12 AM

Boeroer

Arch-Mage

Members

14524 posts

Location:Bucharest, Romania

It's funny: in PoE Barring Death's Door was supersituational. It prevented you from dying because of low health, not from knockouts due to low endurance. As such, you would use it once, maybe twice in a playthrough. But that was ok because you got the spell without any drawback - came automatically with all the other spells at level up.

Now with endurance/health gone it has to be redesigned to be of any use. If the designers would have wanted to keep its nicheness then they would have redesigned BDD in a way that it prevents death from too many injuries. THat would have been the 1:1 translation from PoE to Deadfire.

But at the same time priests have to hand pick their spells now. So you want to make sure you don't pick a spell that you might only use twice in a playthrough. That made the 1:1 translation less attractive and they ended up with the current solution - which is a pain in the stern to balance.

Archaven

Posted 02 November 2018 - 02:22 AM

Archaven

(10) Necromancer

Members

1500 posts

BDD ain't that great with many enemy casters. Arcane dampener is really PITA. Is there a way to counter it? Enemy mages hide behind tanks and DPSers. And that's not just 1 mage or warlocks we are talking about. There are few of them.

If the idea is that player must take the hit, only way is hostile reduction? You can't be possibly having everyone in a team to focus on that

Kaylon

Posted 02 November 2018 - 04:03 AM

Kaylon

(9) Sorcerer

Members

1281 posts

BDD ain't that great with many enemy casters. Arcane dampener is really PITA. Is there a way to counter it? Enemy mages hide behind tanks and DPSers. And that's not just 1 mage or warlocks we are talking about. There are few of them.

If the idea is that player must take the hit, only way is hostile reduction? You can't be possibly having everyone in a team to focus on that

For a single character I think it's possible to increase your Will high enough to completely ignore Arcane Dampener. However the attacks reducing the duration of your buffs (like Concussive Tranquilizer) might be harder to avoid.

thelee

Posted 02 November 2018 - 09:06 AM

thelee

(10) Necromancer

Members

1402 posts

In terms of game systems design or evaluating some metagame/strategy, "healing" in the conventional tool-tip sense is not a useful enough definition, because ultimately what matters is "how long you stay alive." In that sense, BDD and healing accomplish the same goals, but they do so differently by changing which variable they keep fixed to accomplish it (in the mathematical model).

Not arguing with the math, which is sound as an abstract, I do think that by dismissing the environment you present an error about BDD.

1. The counter to healing – damage, is much more common than the counter to BDD – Arcane Dampener. So, in all of the game healing has less weight than BDD in achieving the goal "of staying alive". BDD is more effective (and arguably requires less resources – stats, equipment, e.t.c – from the player).

2. The counter to BDD happens to counter all buffs without specific discrimination.

3. The environment provides ways to exploit BDD – Salvation of Time and Brilliant.

One can't make BDD less effective by just giving out Arcane Dampener to every schmuck in every encounter, bosses to be a challenge have to have some form of Arcane Dampener built into them, fun and good buffs get screwed by association, and BDD in it's current form is a pain in the hindquarters from a designers perspective.

Point is – you can say, that everything is nice and dandy with being immortal for some time as a general concept, but you can't say the same about the implementation of this concept in Deadfire.

I'm not discounting the environment. The math is just to say that BDD is effectively another form of healing. The environment is what makes that "alternate form of healing" from a curiosity into something potentially powerful. If ways to dispel buffs were just as prevalent as damage, no one would be talking about BDD; in fact buffs would be completely useless and we'd just be basically playing a glorified version of dungeon siege 1.

BDD ain't that great with many enemy casters. Arcane dampener is really PITA. Is there a way to counter it? Enemy mages hide behind tanks and DPSers. And that's not just 1 mage or warlocks we are talking about. There are few of them.

If the idea is that player must take the hit, only way is hostile reduction? You can't be possibly having everyone in a team to focus on that

For a single character I think it's possible to increase your Will high enough to completely ignore Arcane Dampener. However the attacks reducing the duration of your buffs (like Concussive Tranquilizer) might be harder to avoid.

If you multiclass with rogue you can gain various effects that make you "untargetable", which means even if you're inside the AoE of an effect you're not affected. (And anyway once you become untargetable they'll change targets). I think only other class with untargetability is ranger, but it's at AL9.

The fact that BDD has a weakness at all (arcane dampener and such) is a necessary thing to keep such an effect in check imo. This really goes for all sorts of powerful buffs.